CONNECTICUT OPINION

CONNECTICUT OPINION; The Lessons 'Walden' Never Taught

By PATRICK SULLIVAN; Patrick Sullivan lives in Canterbury.

Published: May 1, 1988

I had envisioned a lusciously pastoral process - oak tenons slipping neatly into oak mortises, tankards of ale, robust laughter. My expectations about building my own house were, I admit, rather unrealistic, due mainly to reading ''Walden'' and a few too many Eric Sloane books.

I hadn't anticipated the bent nails, the 2 by 6's ripped out and put back two or three times or the thousand other minor and major difficulties. I was even surprised by the clouds of black flies. There is no mention of black flies in ''Walden'' or in any of Mr. Sloane's books.

We started at 6:30 A.M. on Memorial Day, 1983. I stood in the predawn haze next to a $3,000 pile of lumber, about to continue a distinguished American tradition.

I had my 20-ounce Estwing framing hammer and was eager to rip into the 25-pound box of 16 D nails. I thought of the Colonial Americans, hewing their homes out of logs with adzes and draw knives. (I had taken one look at a 30-foot oak on our wood lot and decided to have my lumber delivered.) I looked at my wife and my father and brother. We all knew we were embarking on an adventure of archetypal significance. It was like the seconds just before a big ball game when players collect their energies and ponder their cosmic significance. Then I pulled a 2 by 6 off the pile and said, ''Well, let's toss 'er up!''

And so we began, in high spirits and innocently expecting our days to be filled only with cleanly driven nails. But it wasn't long before my pastoral visions began to pale. After four weeks of hitting our fingers with our hammers, cursing our wobbly ladder and draining the checking account, we realized that we had started a project of considerable proportion.

We struggled on, through the heat, through the black fly season, through the fall. We were still nailing up sheet rock on Thanksgiving. Around Christmas, with the house done except for the taping, I collapsed. My brother, the only consistent help I had, moved back to Long Island looking forward to rest and videos, all the hats in his hat collection now stained with flies, wasps and mosquitoes.

My wife and I moved in, cut down a Christmas tree and celebrated by sleeping for a week.

The tradition of building one's own house has become all but extinct, perhaps understandably. It is now shrouded in mystery and superstition. Only a few can speak the strange language of 10 D double-head and ground-fault interrupters with anything that even approaches fluency.

I offer nine tips in an attempt to resuscitate an important art form. With these basic guidelines, and a hammer, circular saw and $20,000, we can once again begin to fashion our own homes with our own hands. 1. Ten-inch-by-10-inch-by-12-foot oak beams are heavy.

Don't be deluded by Eric Sloane's books, which picture colonial farmers handling beams and smiling. We cursed, sweated and fantasized about derricks a lot. But we didn't smile. 2. Beware of men with big equipment who move quickly and without regard for property or human life.

These men are easy to spot. They usually have red beards and leave a trail of crushed beer cans behind them. One such man who was helping us lift some of our beams almost took my head off with a seven-pound iron grappling hook. I was lucky to escape with my I.Q. intact.

The best approach for this problem when you've identified such a person on your site is to pull out a few six-packs and to suddenly remember a pressing engagement. Remove to safety. Call in the evening and apologize profusely for running into an unexpected delay. Promise to call back in a week or so. Mark his name in the telephone book with a skull and crossbones for future reference. 3. Line up a good marriage counselor.

Building your own house becomes an obsession like no other you have ever experienced. You will spend six months concentrating intensely on the house, and then one day you will remember you are married. If you're lucky, your wife will still be there, working somewhere on the site. If you're not, she has moved out two months before and has been waiting for you to notice. 4. Everything costs twice as much as you think it will.

This is an infallible principle. Use it, and you will never be surprised when you get to the lumberyard cash register. You'll be depressed, maybe, but never surprised. Ignore it, and you will find yourself constantly standing bewildered at the cash register, saying things like: ''Are you sure this total is correct? Are you sure you didn't also charge me for a cement mixer or 3,000 board feet of red cedar ship lap by mistake?'' 5. Order a few extra boxes of checks.

Writing $300 checks will become second nature within weeks, primarily because you will be writing two or three a day. This used to seem like a lot of money. Now, however, spending money will become something about which you will feel remarkably numb. Your only solace will be knowing that someday it will have to end. 6. Don't feed the volunteer help home-cooked food. It's Ring Dings and beer they really want.

My wife labored for hours in the kitchen each day preparing fruit salads, blueberry pies and triple-decker sandwiches. It was the least we could do, we thought, for the people who were volunteering their time to our project. They ate the food, of course, but to the great consternation of my wife, they only really cared about the beer and Ring Dings. Lay in plenty when you start your project. 7. Humor the building inspector.

Building inspectors cast God-like shadows. I suppose they must be normal enough off the job - playing with their children, going fishing, that sort of thing. On the job, however, they wield absolute power and invariably inspire anguish. You, naturally, desire to achieve home builder's nirvana, the certificate of occupancy.

It is best to get a little practice nodding your head up and down and saying: ''Oh, I couldn't agree more. I wish I had thought of that. I'll get right on it.'' Try this in front of a mirror a few times to build your confidence. If you limit yourself to this particular gesture and these particular words, you can't help but succeed. 8. Buy stock in an insect-repellent company.

You will encounter insects in greater numbers and varieties than you ever imagined. They will land on you only when you're eating lunch or when you have both hands busy. Plan on encountering some of the more exotic members of the species.

A three-inch phosphorescent flying beetle visited our site one afternoon. I shudder just remembering it. It was as big as a bird, and it looked dangerous. I haven't been that frightened since getting audited by the Internal Revenue Service. This one didn't show up in any field guide on insects. I'm hoping it was some kind of mutant, rather than a neighborhood regular. Bring a camera along. These insects make great memories. 9. In the end, it's all worth it.

After you finish, everything changes. You'll moan and groan and sweat and curse while you're building, but after you move in, you'll begin to remember fondly the days you spent working on the house.

There is a story or a memory wherever your eyes happen to land - on a particular piece of sheet rock, on a particular window, on a particular nail. And there isn't really any better feeling than sitting in a house that you built, even if you are exhausted.